Fanatical Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide to Opening Sales Conversations and Filling the Pipeline by Leveraging Social Selling, Telephone, Email, Text, and Cold Calling (Jeb Blount)

by Jeb Blount

Last year we hired a sales rep to sell advertising for Sales Gravy. We gave her training, guidance, support, and leads. When she started, I had a heart-to-heart conversation with her. I explained that the first 60 days would the hardest she would face. She would have to work hard to build her pipeline. Along the way she'd get lots of rejection, make mistakes, and become embarrassed from time to time as she learned to present a new, unfamiliar product. Our new rep worked hard for exactly 29 days. Then I got the call. She was quitting. There were lots of excuses: The job was overwhelming, she didn't feel like she was having success, maybe advertising sales wasn't the best fit. I explained again that these feelings were to be expected with something new, and if she just stuck with it for a little while longer, her efforts would pay off. But her mind was already made up. She quit. We jumped on the phone and followed up with all of the prospects she'd put into her pipeline. She did a great job in her first 29 days of getting qualified prospects into the pipe. So good, in fact, that we closed almost all of the opportunities she had developed. Her commission on these sales would have been $7,000. Instead she received zero. Quitting is a choice. Most people when faced with challenges quit too soon—often right as they are on the cusp of success.